[robowombat]

This is a very old topology around the German army long before Rommel although he may well have quoted it. Some attribute it to the elder Moltke, although he would be too diplomatic to ever say it outside of a tight circle of friends. The phrase ‘the actively stupid’ really strikes a nerve in the US Army with its emphasis on templates and endless and purposeless busy work and its stiflingly stupid bureaucracy. Each time i told this story at least one field grade officer displayed either aggravation or real anger. ‘Takes one to know one’. I thought but didn't say.

[AnAmericanMother]

That's why I said the quote's never been run down. It might have been said by Moltke Sr. among very intimate friends, but not for attribution as they say.

It's certainly a truism. My family have always been the citizen-soldiers who show up for the wars and gaze in mingled wonder and disgust on the by-the-book peacetime career men. Spike Milligan probably described them best in his sketch of a colonel he called "Leather Suitcase" who "went out in the first Montgomery Purge".